Abstract

[Abstract]: The quality of teaching in schools is directly linked to the quality of preservice preparation thatteachers receive. This is particularly important in the area of music teacher education, given theunique challenges that classroom music teachers commonly face. This paper reports on researchdesigned to investigate the knowledge and skills that early-career music teachers perceive to benecessary to function effectively in the classroom, and their perceptions of the effectiveness ofcurrent teacher education programs in preparing them to teach secondary classroom music.Questionnaires were completed by 76 secondary classroom music teachers in their first three yearsof teaching in Queensland, Australia. Importance-Performance Analysis was used to determinethose areas of the preservice course that constituted a high priority for attention. The findingssuggest that preservice teachers need increased support in their development of pedagogicalcontent knowledge and skills, and non-pedagogical professional content knowledge and skills.This research provides an empirical basis for reconceptualising music teacher education coursesand raises important issues that music teacher educators need to address in order to ensure thatgraduates are adequately prepared for classroom music teaching.